


and here I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever

by deathrae



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Din'an Hanin is not screwing around man, Gen, Trespasser DLC content in chapter 3, and you can't stop me MWAHAHA, karrael lavellan, no one should allow me to write drabbles we'll be here all day, not spoilers per se but it's set during those events, okay let's be real this is probably just gonna end up being a big sounding board for my headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 06:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5153219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of thoughts, character studies, and drabbles about Inquisition and its myriad characters.</p><p>Tags will be updated as pieces are added, and rating subject to change as needed...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and he, standing upon the storm-swept rocks, knelt and prayed

As Inquisitor he didn’t really feel like a hero, or a commander, or a mage, or even a particularly noteworthy man. Rather he felt like a climber, a hiker, a small man made smaller by nature, dwarfed by the greatness of the cliffs at his back as he stood high on strong stone shoulders, notable only because he had made the effort, scaled the cliffs, and braved the climb.

His friends, however. His friends were mountain and cliff, gemstone and iron. _They_ were his true strength, not his own physical abilities or magical might.

Cullen, the great rigid backbone of the range, was flawed in places, a foundation with just a few cracks, but strong and unassailable. Josephine was a shining marble statue, glowing like a carven monolith of Andraste herself, welcoming and bright and _good_. Leliana was the flash of steel hidden among the rocks, the sharp shard you couldn’t see among the wood chippings and the grass until you’ve stepped on it.

Solas was a river stone worn smooth by time, hidden beneath the rushing creek, a secret in plain sight, while Vivienne was a wickedly curved bit of obsidian, dark but shimmering, glossy like glass but unbreakable. Dorian was a great shard of ruby, colored by his past and his history, stained by the blood-red legacy of the Imperium, but gleaming and bright and sharp in a way that was new and clean.

Cole was the light reflected off gleaming opal and glass, shimmering and flighty and impossible to catch; Sera was little bits of gravel ground down by larger stones but in the end, crucial to upholding, and then _uprooting_ , far larger boulders as they gave way in landslides, toppled by her quick shifts and sudden lurches. Varric, scratched at by rough hands and scarred by miners, was rough and dark but sturdier than he seemed, and warm to the touch. The keystone over a fireplace, rough and hewn but comforting and reliable and home.

Bull was a great mountain all to his own, of course, but made up a share of the range easily enough and bore pain and toil equally on his broad shoulders. He was strong and deceptively smooth, unassuming but constant, rigid but giving, hiding many wrong paths and a precious few that were his closely guarded secrets, told only to his dearest friends. His Chargers filled in the gaps, shoring up the wall alongside Blackwall, a dark cliff, made sharp and cold by years of fear, regret, and deception. He was firm, unyielding, a vicious extension and counter to Cullen's foundation and Bull's unshakeable core.

And Cassandra.

Cassandra stood like a great spire along the sea, weathered by the weight of years and the cutting winds and rain of responsibility. Her shoulders were rounded under the straps of her armor, giving her an air of affectation, as if she meant to hide in herself and convey a reverent smallness that was belied by her cutting voice, clipped Nevarran tones made all the harsher by her hard-won authority. She was no less great than the others but seemed incapable, or at least unwilling, to look her own might in the eye. She was content to downplay, to deflect, to humble herself in the face of adoration, deserved or otherwise.

She was the stone he leaned on the most, his hands memorizing the smooth, rounded planes of her strength. She was his guiding beacon as he stared into the ocean and the blazing crucible that was the Breach, as he called upon all the might of earth to move with him and weather this greatest storm.


	2. crackle of mage-fire in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've a headcanon about mages and mana buildup, so Dorian gets to suffer for it apparently...

Dorian flipped pages idly as he sat in the Inquisitor’s bed, clicking his tongue against his teeth with disapproval as he skimmed the pages.

“Don’t like the book?” the Inquisitor asked from his desk, laughing softly as he looked up from his combat reports. “It’s not another dissertation on Divine Galatea’s schedule, is it?”

“Perish the thought,” Dorian said, turning a laugh into a scoff of distaste. “As if I would be caught _dead_ reading such garbage.” A shock of stiff pain cramped his hands and he winced, dropping the book into his lap and curling and uncurling his fingers, pressing his thumb into his palm.

“Mm, never, no,” the Inquisitor murmured, his attention on his paperwork again, and Dorian allowed himself a moment’s true grimace as he tried to work the ache out of his knuckles.

“Hm,” he offered, distracted.

“Are you alright?”

Dorian hissed faintly, stretching his fingers out as best he could, knuckles cracking as he twisted them around each other.

The bed shifted next to him and he looked up to his Inquisitor sitting beside his knees. “Dorian?”

“Ah, it’s no trouble, really,” Dorian said, laughing with a deliberate brightness, though he imagined he couldn’t quite dispel the knit to his brow, based on his Inquisitor’s unshakeably concerned expression. “Mana buildup, that’s all. It’s more common in battle-casters, you see; frequent casting in large, fast succession shifts internal energy balances about, speeds up your recovery time. But then it’s _quite_ a chore to slow them back down again. Most don’t bother, of course, you’ll only throw it all out of whack again the next time you get into a spat.” The Inquisitor took his hands, cradling them both in his own, and Dorian sighed softly. “ _Amatus_ really, it’s alright. It’s normal.”

“Your definition of normal is very strange, you know.”

Dorian laughed, more genuinely this time. “It’s grown rather more strange since joining _your_ merry band, I assure you.”

“Mm, of course.” The Inquisitor rubbed slow, deep circles into Dorian’s palms with his thumbs, his fingers resting at Dorian’s wrists, and Dorian couldn’t quite bite down a grateful sigh. The anchor picked up like it had been following a cue, crackling soundlessly, and Dorian felt a little more of the tense, sparking energy in his hands leech out to join it, loosening the vice grip on his joints. It shimmered orange and red across his fingers as it migrated, the energy warm, burning with unrealized fire.

“Did you know it could do that,” he mumbled, feeling boneless and pliant the longer the mark glowed. The Inquisitor chuckled, shifting slightly to allow Dorian to slide down against his pillows, still working at his hands.

“I didn’t, no. Feeling better?”

“Yes, as long as you don’t stop.”

“That could be arranged.”

He cracked open one eye, lazy, and smirked. “Don’t put off more of your work on my account, _amatus_.”

“What, and take away one of my best excuses to put off work? You fiend.”


	3. purple fire upon the stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A word of advice. Don't walk across the purple glowing floor tiles.
> 
> A missing scene of sorts, from my first run through Trespasser.

The valley temple was silent, eerie in its half-ruined state. Lavellan was sure by this point they’d wandered around the same spire three times in alternating directions, but he felt sure he’d missed something. Overlooked something. And there was so much... something. So much _history_ , perhaps, here. He didn’t want to miss anything.

Though in retrospect, he decided, staring down at the strange, glowing, oil-slick-like purple stain on the stones, he might’ve preferred to miss this one thing.

Cassandra drew just close enough to sniff nervously at the air, then recoiled a step. "What _is_ this?"

Lavellan crept up behind her, sniffed as well, ears flared forward to listen. He smelled something, almost like the air after a lightning strike. The ground made a sound he couldn’t quite describe, like a raw, crackling, ominous noiselessness. "I've never seen anything like this. Dorian?"

"Never,” Dorian said, crossing his arms over his chest as he surveyed it. “A corruption of the Fade here perhaps? A leak from the Breach?"

Varric snorted derisively, tucking his hands into his pockets. "That doesn't even make sense, Sparkles."

"Best I can do on short notice. Give me a little warning next time we're encountering never-before-seen arcane mysteries, perhaps?"

Lavellan stood up on his toes to peer across the strange stain. "There's something over there,” he reported, then rocked back on his heels. “Perhaps I can just… cross?"

“Careful,” Varric cautioned, as Cassandra rocked from foot to foot, clearly nervous, but reticent to draw further away.

He stepped forward, cautious, slow, but as his boot set down atop it he froze, a low gurgling cry choking in his throat. He was burning, from the inside out, all his blood turning to purple fire, and it _hurt_. He crumpled and just before all his vision turned violet he heard Cassandra scream his name.

He woke to elfroot on his tongue and the sound of shattering glass and Cassandra's hands on his face.

"Do not _ever_ do that again!"

"Don't have to tell me twice," he wheezed, slowly sitting up, Dorian's hands bracing against his back.

"Maybe I can jump across?"

Cassandra’s voice was like a whip cracking through the air. "Not a chance. If you get stranded out of reach, then all is lost. We only barely brought you back this time."

"Hm. Walk across the railing then?"

"Hate to break it to you," Varric said, scrubbing a smudge from Bianca's stock, "But that purple shit is on the railing too."

"Solas! Solas could Fade-Step across!"

A heavy pause, and Dorian cleared his throat. "Solas isn't here, I'm afraid. Just how hard did you hit your head when you fell?"

Lavellan grimaced. "Right, right. Lost track for a moment I suppose…” He frowned, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Well, as a knight enchanter I learned to cloak myself... at least let me try that before we give up?"

Cassandra looked ready to tell him off, but Varric shrugged and spoke up just as she opened her mouth. "If you're sure you can go far enough under it, hell, why not."

“Worth a shot,” Lavellan said, levering himself up to his feet again and rolling his shoulders. He got as close to the stain as he dared, took a deep breath, and drew the Fade around him, wrapping it around his shoulders like a cape as he bolted forward, gasping with effort as the cloak fell away on the other side, ripping from him as his energy ran out. He whirled around, raising a hand back to them, and Cassandra looked ready to collapse with relief. Her mouth moved, hard to hear over the crackle of the purple fire and the distance, but even from afar he saw her lips forming around familiar syllables. _Thank the Maker_.

“I’m alright!” he shouted back.

“That’s great, Inquisitor,” Varric hollered. “Just check out what’s over there and come back, alright?”

He nodded, turning to open the large chest he’d nearly tripped over getting here. Inside was… was…

“It’s junk!” he shouted, half from frustration and half to be heard. He shoved the sword and the minor amulet back into the chest in frustration and sighed, still catching his breath, propping his hands on his hips and pacing back from the chest.

Varric shrugged. “Pitch it up here, maybe we can sell it when we get back!”

“Alright, alright,” Lavellan grumbled, shoving the amulet into his pocket and wrapping the sword in its sheath before he tossed it, warping a bit of the Fade to carry it safely back to Varric.

“Come back!” Cassandra added, and he waved a hand up at her.

He sighed, checking the lyrium potion tucked into a belt pouch before latching it again. Not for something like this. He already felt enough of a fool wasting so much time to get over here, he wouldn’t waste resources on this.

“Dread Wolf take it,” he grumbled, taking a step back to get a bit of a running start as he felt his energy settle. “I’m coming back!” he hollered up, so they would back away and give him space as he charged forward, cloaking himself to bolt up the steps.

“You’re all right,” Cassandra said on a relieved sigh, and he nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself.

“Don’t kick yourself too hard, Inquisitor,” Varric said. “We need your legs in top shape.”

“Right,” Lavellan grumbled, rubbing his hand when the mark crackled and ached. “Let’s… let’s just keep going. We’ve lingered long enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasted _so much fucking time_ trying to get across that shit before I triggered getting Anchor invulnerability. I died like three times trying and there was seriously nothing of value in that dumb chest. Bastards.
> 
> (The Fade Cloak totally works though, if it's a small enough splotch. The longer ones, not so much. I never did try Fade Step though. Nobody had it but Solas on my run.)


	4. to dream the words you never said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the dark before sleeping I rehearse conversations yet unsaid, and asleep I rehearse conversations that will never be._

It was in the dreams she said the things she should have. Would have. Wished she did, if only she’d had the brains in her head to say them aloud when it mattered.

“I begged you not to drink from the well. Why could you not have listened!”  
“Solas…”  
“You gave yourself into the service of an ancient Elven god!”  
“Wh _–_ ” Her voice catches for only a moment. “What does that mean exactly?”  
“You are Mythal’s creature now. Everything you do, whether you know it or not, will be for her. You’ve given up a part of yourself.”

And in the rush of her fear and anger, the words rolling off her lips were sharpened to hurt, snide and sneering. “You don’t even _believe_ in the Elven gods!”

But here. Here, where the Fade was warped and crackling at the background of her mind, just shy of waking her, she can choose different words. Words that come out hollow. Broken.

“ _I know_ ,” she whispered, instead of flinging spite and stubbornness in his face. Her gaze flickers down. Then up, to the jawbone hanging from his neck. Then down again, to the floor. Her eyes slip shut. “ _I’m sorry. I’m… Solas, I’m afraid._ ”

It _is_ a dream, and because it is a dream he is just that bit more idealized, just that slightest bit different. Instead of raising his voice, he falters. Instead of sneering, he frowns. His hard gaze changes, just slightly, and the badly-masked fear in his eyes softens. His hands enfold hers and hide her fingers inside his.

“ _Why didn’t you listen to me_ ,” he repeats, heavy with an emotion she can’t name. He leans his forehead against hers and her breath catches in her throat on relief.

“ _It was all so loud,_ ” she whispers, and leans into his touch, thankful for the heat of his hands around hers, the sense of him solid and Fade-real in front of her. “ _I couldn’t…make sense of it, I couldn’t separate your voice from the Well’s…_ ” Her voice cracks and breaks and she clenches her eyes shut against threatening tears. “ _I’m such a fool…_ ”

He sighs, but doesn’t speak. Just listens.

It is a dream, and she isn’t afraid of the upper floors the way she is in daylight. She isn’t afraid of ears perked to hear their conversation over the railings. She leans forward, cursing her own name as her forehead thumps dully against his chest. “ _They should never have given me this responsibility. It was only a matter of time before I messed it all up._ ”

He clicks his tongue against his teeth and wraps his arms around her shoulders. “ _Shh. Vhenan. You are no fool, save perhaps in moments like this, when you say such absurd things about yourself as if they were fact._ ”

She curls her arms around him, hands tangling into the back of his tunic. “ _But it–”_

“ _It isn’t true,_ ” he says again, more firmly. “ _You’ve done so much good, and worked so hard. I may not know what repercussions this will have, but it is merely an obstacle. Not a permanent failure._ ”

 

In the morning she wakes slowly, reluctant, and rubs her hands over skin that is too clear, too clean.

She can’t shake the feeling that the _Well_ was not the choice that brands her as a fool after all.


	5. let's put this problem on ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment of excitement while exploring Elandrin's tomb in the Emerald Graves...

The tomb was eerily quiet, silent in that way that only ancient, tired places are silent.

Except, of course, for the Red Templars wandering around here and there, kicking over barrels and statues to find the pieces of the emerald seal.

Lavellan curled her fingers around the grip of her bow, stretching to ready herself, and patted the four pieces already sitting in her pocket. She took a deep breath, pointing and signaling the others. Two Templars stood at the top of the stairs, and she went into stealth to position herself in the exact middle of the bottom landing.

Perfectly on cue, Bull roared, drawing both the Templars' attention, and Dorian and Solas’ spells made quick work of them as Bull charged up the stairs to keep them from so much as raising their swords. Her arrow exploded between them just as Bull buried them both in the stone with a heavy _slam_ of his greatsword.

She grinned, nodding to Dorian as he preened over the successful maneuver.

In the moment of congratulations, she almost missed the heavy thud of oversized feet and the familiar, eerie _scrape_ of red lyrium across the ground.

A Red Behemoth turned, standing at the top of the stairs, and locked its disgusting, sunken eyes on her.

“ _Fenedhis_!” she spat, pulling her bow back up. The Behemoth swatted Bull away like he was a fly, dragging its deformed, weighted hammer of an arm behind it with a horrible screech of stone on stone to start a swing.

She loosed arrows in a flurry, Dorian’s spellfire whooshing past her with an audible crackle.

_Thwip, thwip, thwip,_ arrows embedding in the red stone, missing its eyes, its throat, cracking but never breaking through to vital organs.

It heaved the arm up over its head, then forward, letting the momentum carry it down the stairs. Its feet scrabbled along behind, barely keeping pace with its enormous arm. She screamed, backing up as far as she could until she hit a wall, only barely registering white ice crystals frantically spreading across its chest as she buried arrow after arrow into it, trying every trick she knew.

It roared, the hammer coming down at her face, and she flinched, looking away.

And it froze. Creators and Maker, whoever was listening, she thanked them all, because the Behemoth froze solid into a white block, the hammer so close to her face she could’ve kissed it. Solas, to her right, struggled for a full breath, cursing, and Dorian was backed into a corner to her left, trapped by the Behemoth’s frozen shoulder.

She pulled up her bow, shaking, and buried one more arrow into its face, spells searing past her from either side as Bull ran down the stairs, slamming his blade so solidly into the ice that it shattered altogether, raining down ice crystals and fractured chunks of frozen red flesh.

“You alright Boss?” he asked, enveloping her shoulder in his hand as she slowly lowered the bow.

Solas slid up beside her like a snake, wordless, all his questions in his eyes, his lips pressed tight into a line. His hand brushed hers, and she tangled her fingers into his without a thought, nodding to Bull.

“Yeah,” she said, the word coming out like a whisper as her voice caught up to the rest of her. “Yeah. I’m...I’m fine.”

“Well,” Dorian said, sounding strangled and tense. “That was exciting.”

She chuckled hollowly. “Exciting is a good word for it, Dorian, thank you. Let’s uh. Let’s continue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No guys you don't understand this happened in-game exactly as it happens here. It was INCREDIBLE and TERRIFYING and I needed to process it somewhere. :|


	6. ata~ashi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bull's celebratory drinks are a little hard on the system for, you know. Anyone who isn't Bull. Or possibly also Bull, really, but especially to one small Lavellan huntress.
> 
> Solas is... less amused.

 “Oi, Chuckles. I have a question for you.”

Solas sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking up from the shard sitting on his desk as the dwarf stepped into the rotunda, pausing to look around at the more recently completed panels. Solas tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair for a moment, expecting more.

“Yes, Varric?”

Varric looked down from the paintings, his eyebrows staying up a moment longer. “Right, yeah. Have you seen the Inquisitor recently?”

“No,” Solas said, brows drawing together before he returned his attention to his books, flipping through one of the compendiums Josephine had acquired for him. “Last I saw her she was making her rounds of Skyhold, but that was hours ago. Last on her list to talk to was the Iron Bull, I believe?”

Varric nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

He was definitely not going to get any reading done today. Solas gathered his patience, sighed, and took the bait, looking up at Varric again. “Afraid? Why?”

“Because Bull wanted to celebrate the slaying of the Fereldan Frostback you guys took down in the Hinterlands.”

Solas frowned, expressing his lack of understanding without words.

“With a drink.”

Solas narrowed his eyes almost to slits, willing the dwarf to explain more quickly. If ever he had been able to spontaneously develop a spell to force people to speak…

Varric gave him a dour look. “A _Qunari_ drink.”

A less-eloquent man might have described Solas as jumping out of his seat. Varric would have instead used words like “standing abruptly, with an urgency that was entirely unhurried, and thus unquestionably Solas-like.”

The book thumped closed on the desk and Solas already had his coat and was out the door before Varric had decided on that description.

“Thank you for letting me know, Varric,” echoed back at him as Solas padded out into the main hall and down the stairs. Varric stole after him, sneaking out behind him to watch him marching across the courtyard like there was a storm brewing in his skin.

Varric decided to stay in the main hall. Where it was safe.

 

Solas settled the magic brewing in his blood and stepped into the tavern. The first thing he noticed was one of the bar staff mopping the floor where a tankard had fallen to the floor and spilled across the main room. The Bull was a mountain of grey flesh and horn sprawled across the floor behind two of the bar stools, and Cabot was dutifully wiping down the counter where Bull had collapsed, evidently the cause of the toppled tankard.

He sighed, setting his hands on his hips, and scanned the room. Krem was gathering a few of the Chargers to recover their fallen leader, hefting him off the floor.

It took six of them.

Next to Bull, still more or less on the stool, was the Inquisitor. She was leaning on the bar, one arm thrown all the way over so that her fingers brushed Cabot’s sleeve now and then when he passed her.

He crossed the room, dodging the mop and the spilled…drink. Whatever it was.

“Ma vhenan,” he murmured, setting a hand on her shoulder. She stirred, fingers twitching by Cabot’s sleeve.

That she was still conscious was surprising, and actually somewhat impressive.

She didn’t look up at him, exactly, but her eyes flicked around, vaguely in his direction before dropping back toward the bar.

“Sh… sh… sola…sh.”

“Mm.” He slid a hand under her head to cradle her face, the other under her arm, carefully lifting her off the bar. “Time to go, vhenan.”

“But Bull,” she mumbled, and he levered her vaguely upright, leaning her against his chest.

“He is well looked after, vhenan, I assure you.”

She mumbled a vague acceptance of fact and he curled an arm under her knees to lift her off the stool, and she gave a soft cheer, head lolling back against his shoulder, eyes glassy and wide with awe.

“Spinning…” she mumbled, and he pressed his lips tight together to fight a laugh.

“All right, I’m taking you to your room,” he said.

“Nooooo,” she said, stretching in his arms, and he curled her in close so she couldn’t wriggle out of his grip.

“Back to your room, vhenan.”

She sighed, and stopped fighting, which he counted a small victory. He took her up the stairs, picking his way along to find the back way to the gardens. The fewer prying eyes the better, and at least the Chantry sisters would only whisper rumors behind their backs.

“The prophet’s laurel is blooming,” she mumbled, sing-song as he carried her under the awnings.

“It is, vhenan. You worked hard on it.”

“I did,” she said. “I’m glad. It’s pretty. But not as pretty as you.”

He tightened his jaw and didn’t look at her, but he smiled, and she cheered softly, reaching up to lightly touch his ear with her fingers.

“You’re _blushing_ ,” she sang, and he felt his face go a little hotter at the observation.

“And how could I not be affected by the compliment of a beautiful woman?” he said softly, once he’d stepped into the hall and closed the door. They had a moment of solitude. She giggled and continued touching his ear, her fingers tracing over lines and curls with an idle reverence, a subtle pleasure twisting in his gut.

Varric looked up when he shouldered open the door to the main hall, then smirked faintly and offered a small salute as Solas rolled his eyes visibly and headed down the hall to her quarters. Varric jogged to catch up and walk alongside them.

“Tiny knock her on her ass, eh Chuckles?”

“I wasn’t knocked aaaanywhere,” she sang, and Solas sighed.

“Yes, though at least she was still seated at the bar when I found her.” He smirked and Varric raised an eyebrow. “More than can be said for Bull.”

Varric laughed and opened the door for Solas to carry her inside. “Good on you, Chuckles.”

“Thank you again, Varric,” Solas said, heading up the stairs as the Inquisitor murmured nonsensically to herself and waved a hand in farewell to Varric.

“All right, almost there,” he said, and she shifted again, dragging herself up along his body until her face was by his ear. “Yes?”

She kissed his ear, and he stopped at the top of the stairs, his breath catching. Her teeth dragged on his lobe and he took a slow, shaky breath in.

“Vhenan…”

“I love when you call me that.”

He walked up the last flight to her room, stopping a few steps from her bed. “Vhenan, you should… you should drink some water, and then you should sleep.”

“Stay,” she whispered in his ear, and he shuddered before he could stop it. “I know you want to.”

 _Not like this_ , he thought. _Yes, but not like this_.

“You should _rest_. What you seem to have in mind is not exactly _restful_.”

“It could be,” she mumbled childishly, and he set her down, guiding her back to sit on the bed.

“I’ll get you water,” he said, walking away as she started pulling at the fastenings on her tunic.

When he returned with a cup she was sprawled horizontally across her bed, her tunic undone but still hanging from her shoulders, and he allowed himself a soft laugh. He set the cup aside, taking off her tunic and her belts, removing her boots and setting them by the chest at the foot of her bed.

She didn’t stir when he picked her up and turned down the quilts, laying her into the sheets and tucking her in. His fingers stalled on the rough, Dalish-raised heels of her feet where she had once walked bramble and root like he did. He sighed, gathering the quilts over her, only noticing her fingers had curled into his sleeve when he started to leave.

“Stay,” she whispered, her eyes still closed, and he sighed.

“Will you rest, if I stay,” he said.

“Mmhm,” she mumbled, pouting like a child.

He sighed, watching her. In sleep, or near-sleep, her features were soft, vulnerable. The scar on her lip seemed only a shadow in the dimness. She looked so young. Such the child, compared to he and his most ancient soul.

“Ma nuvenin,” he finally said on a breath out, and the corner of her mouth ticked up in a smile.

“Ar lath ma,” she mumbled, and he pulled away to shrug out of his coat and his tunic, sliding in behind her with the jawbone hanging heavy and cool on his chest, making her jump when it touched her back.

He curled an arm around her, leaning close to whisper in her ear. He felt her shudder, and smiled wider, his lips inches from her ear, letting his breath make her twitch.

“You’ll regret not drinking that water when morning comes, ma vhenan.”

“Fenedhis,” she grumbled, pressing her face into her pillow, and he laughed, settling behind her head to rest.


End file.
